


Hallucination

by dagonst



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagonst/pseuds/dagonst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple squares' worth of hurt-comfort bingo.  The Winter Soldier follows protocol after an injury; Bucky stays in touch while he takes care of the dirty work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hallucination

Sam’s driving, so Steve picks up the phone, accepts the call before it can ring twice. “Bucky.”

“Talk.” Bucky sounds like he hasn’t spoken in a long time, like his throat’s been scraped raw. He still has the accent he’d picked up sometime between D.C. and Warsaw. But he’s speaking English again. “You wanted to talk.” 

“I want to see you,” Steve says. Sam shakes his head at the road. Sam thinks he pushes too hard, the times he’s seen Bucky to speak to. That he should quit trying to break through the HYDRA conditioning. “What do you want me to say?”

A pause. Steve closes his eyes to try to hear better. Bucky’s breathing doesn’t sound good either. “Where you are.”

“Saint Petersburg,” Steve says, which was true two hours ago, and the car hasn’t stopped since then. “What about you?”

“Location is secure.”

“That’s hard to find on a map. I meant a place, like Brooklyn. You remember Brooklyn, Bucky?” Sam rolls his eyes. 

“I remember I said don’t call me that.”

Bucky always responds to his name. Sam pointed out once that he always reacts badly. But he always reacts. “What can I call you?” Bucky doesn’t answer. Steve listens to the background noise. Car engine on his side. On the other, just Bucky breathing. “Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll talk as much as you want.”

Steve has enough time to think he’s pushed too far, and then Bucky says, short bursts. “Chemical burns. I used - it makes healing faster but. Protocol: the Asset must be secured. Monitored. Sleep is not permitted.”

“You want me to keep you awake? You don’t have to follow any protocol, Bucky.”

“The protocol is correct,” Bucky says, so fast it sounds like the words were ripped free. “Location is secure. You will monitor. Don’t let me sleep.” 

“And you’re alone.” Of course he is. The Winter Soldier doesn’t have allies. “I’ll talk. Long as you need. You know the Dodgers moved to California?” Steve starts in on old baseball statistics, praying something in there will catch Bucky’s attention. 

He throws in questions, to make sure Bucky’s still following, still awake. “What kind of place are you at?”

“Rooms. A home.” 

“Like a safe house?”

“Yes, like that.” He adds a little quick, maybe just to change the subject. “How do Dodgers play now?”

“The Dodgers, B - I don’t know. Don’t really follow them lately.” Bucky’s snort sounds a lot like Sam’s. 

The first time Bucky falls asleep, Steve wakes him up just by talking a little louder. “Do you hear me? Bucky, can you hear me? Say something.” 

“ _Shto?_ ”

“You said you want to keep awake.”

“ _Shto?_ ” More hesitant, more suspicious. 

Steve’s picked up a little Russian, enough to scrape together an answer. It comes out something like, ‘you ate, no sleep. Do you remember?’

More hesitation. “The accent is wrong,” Bucky says finally. “Say it again.”

So Steve repeats ‘do you remember’. He’d practiced the phrase before, one of a handful he’d picked up after Bucky quit answering to English.

Bucky says it back to him, faster and more fluid, despite the rasping voice. “Like that. Again.” Bucky makes him say it a dozen more times, until the phrase loses all meaning. Just sounds he’s getting wrong in the smallest ways. “There!” he says finally. “Like that. Now you sound Russian.”

Steve winces. “I’m American, Buck. Don’t need to sound like anything else.” He doesn’t want to. It’s uncomfortably like spying. Had they made Bucky into a spy, too?

Bucky’s long breath might be a sigh. “In Russia, you must speak correctly. If you won’t speak, they will hurt you. If you speak wrong, I will have to. Please don’t make me do this.”

“You don’t - Petersburg, Florida. Not Petrograd. Not Russia, Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, only starts speaking just before Steve starts yelling into the phone again. “I taught that before, I think. How to speak.”

He taught them, and if they did it wrong, he hurt them. It’s hard to reconcile with Bucky’s patience over that one phrase, the smile in his voice when Steve got it right. “What do you remember?”

“Just that. How to do it. Making it right.”

“And punishment for getting it wrong. You speak English with an accent, sometimes.”

“Don’t need to sound like anything else,” Bucky throws back at him.

“You’re not Russian, Bucky. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, you were born in Brooklyn, New York.”

“Talk about something else,” Bucky says.

* * *

“You were putting me to sleep too,” Sam says the second time Bucky stops answering. “You fought aliens, man, and seventy-year-old baseball stats is what you went with?” 

“Bucky liked baseball.” Steve stares at the road. “He won’t say where he is. Why he needs to be monitored, what he thinks is going to happen to him. I can’t do anything from here.”

Sam taps the steering wheel. “He hasn’t hung up on you either. Talking wouldn’t stop him from bursting into flames - assume you’re looking for neurological. Confusion, flashbacks - that’s in the records. Hallucinations, maybe. Keep him calm, keep him talking. If he stops making sense, go along. Don’t start -”

“Arguing, you said that.”

“Couldn’t tell that you heard it. You play nice, now.”

“Always do,” Steve says, before he starts shouting into the phone.

* * *

_-n your feet, sergeant_ \- and he reacts to the kick, more than the voice, and he’s up. And just as quickly doubles over coughing. Movement inadvisable, he remembers. Fresh blood, not enough for concern. Steve Rogers leans over him. Not angry, he decides. 

“Hey - hey, are you okay? Can you hear me? Bucky?” The voice is distant at first, then sharpens. Not a threat, he decides. Hallucination. (Small and weak, like he was before the doctor.) Irrelevant. Do not engage. He picks up the phone again. 

“Yes.”

When he blinks, he’s somewhere else, just for the space of the blink. When he opens his eyes, the Steve is still standing there - it mirrors the phone’s sigh of relief. Then starts talking again. Questions. Invective. Good English, awful Russian. Rogers doesn’t want to speak properly, another target on his chest. They’ll hurt you, he wanted to say, stop saying it wrong, they’ll hurt you. I will hurt you. “The condition is temporary.”

Not a satisfactory answer. Compound N is not to be used in the field. May induce hallucinations, disorientation, erratic behavior. The Asset must be secured. A secure location is the best he can do now. He’s been running from Steve Rogers for months, no-one will look for him in the man’s own apartment. He tries again: “I’ve got this. And you’re not here.”

Steve glares at him. He glares back, before remembering, and looks away. Steve drops his head into his hands. Not surrender - retargeting. Not something he can get from the silence on the phone: Bucky Barnes must have known these things. The format is wrong, but the information is correct. Another whiteout-blink. He inches closer to Rogers.

“Are you seeing things?” 

He starts, guilty. If he concentrates, he can hear that Rogers’ voice is faint, tinny from the cheap phone speaker. If he doesn’t - it’s like he’s just sitting here. “Yes. It looks real.” Except he’s too close. Steven Rogers, that close, would be a problem, a threat. 

“Does it bother you?”

“No.” It should. “It’s - there’s no threat. Location is secure.” Even if it were real, the Steve sitting in front of him couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. And the white - that’s not real. There’s no threat. Location is secure.

“Good,” Rogers says, looking relieved. “Where are you?”

“Home,” he says, and - shit. Shit. “Brooklyn.” Bucky Barnes was born in Brooklyn, New York, it’s the only lie he can give and it’s not good enough. Washington is on the way to Brooklyn. Shit. It coils in his stomach: the failure or the lie, it doesn’t matter which.

“Still with me, Buck?” and he has to bite down hard, shut his eyes for that flash of - to steady himself. That stupid lie. He’s not home. This place isn’t right. 

“I can see you.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Rogers knows too much already. 

“I’m on the road. Georgia, I think. Gonna be a little while.”

“I know. That’s what I’m seeing.”

“That’s your nightmare, huh?” Steve laughs, now. 

Maybe it was, for Bucky Barnes. Steve looks _frail_. This Steve couldn’t survive what he did to Steve Rogers on the helicarrier. Couldn’t survive what happened to him tonight. “I don’t like it.” 

The nightmare is the flashes he keeps getting, the - other place, he’s figured that much out. White tile. Stay awake and it’s not a problem. “Keep talking,” he says, watching how Steve moves. Which he must have remembered, because none of this is anything he could invent. It’s fascinating how easily he can read Steve, how much data he’s getting from Steve’s voice, how that matches gestures, face, everything. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Where are you?” Steve comes back to that again. He thought he knew, but Steve wouldn’t keep asking if it weren’t something. The place doesn’t feel right. 

“It’s cold,” he says finally. 

“It’s secure,” Steve supplies. “You said that. You can stay until I get there.”

He looks around again, cataloging: the records, that’s right. No stack of drawing paper, no pencils except by the phone. Tidy. The shirts are right, but none of them are on the floor. Maybe Bucky Barnes had been the sloppy one. “It’s not the right place. I have to - to report - to be monitored.”

“I’m right here, Buck. You’re monitored. You’re doing fine.”

“I know you.” Failure, ice, blood. And Zola. He hasn’t thought about Zola in - a long time. “Never trusted that creepy bastard, but he said. He’d make me stronger. Better than I was. But I’m not, am I.”

Steve’s face screws up, like there’s a truth he doesn’t like the taste of. “Can’t be worse than dead, Buck.”

He looks at his hand. “I let them.” And then it all comes back. Not just the cold, but what he let them do; what he let them use him for. Everything at once. Steve is above him somewhere, too far away to reach, and he’s back staring at the cracked white tiles with Zola telling him Captain America is dead and the war isn’t over.

“Stay with me,” Steve says. “Bucky, I’m almost there. Washington.”

He’s in the wrong place. Steve’s way isn’t going to work, not here. And there’s Steve, who sounds right, looks right. But Steve would pretend to be okay anywhere. Wouldn’t want to set him off. 

“Order through pain,” he remembers. “Security through chaos.” Everything seems very far away - not his voice reciting their lies, not his hands. His eyes fall on Steve, sitting opposite him. Steve can’t shut up, can’t comply, can’t overlook a damn thing. This Steve, any Steve, they’d crush him. 

“Tell me what you’re seeing,” Steve demands. 

“Steve, you can’t be here.” He squeezes his hand, feels the electric shock when the phone snaps. And then he’s alone.

* * *

He wakes up alone. His name is James Buchanan Barnes. U.S. Army. Serial number who gives a fuck. Steve. The mangled mess of his cheap phone is opposite the far wall, but he had been talking to Steve for a while there. Seventy years, but he can call Steve Rogers on the phone. 

He has things to get done. Cleaning up the Winter Soldier’s business. Cleaning up, that’s what you do when you lose a war. But he can call Steve, and that’s - not a little thing.


	2. Imprisonment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Imprisonment" bingo square.

Bucky keeps an eye on Steve. He always did. He put the camera in Steve’s kitchen, gave himself a good view. Watching Steve is a good break, whenever he can get an internet connection. Steve keeps regular hours. Steve puts his food on a plate and eats it at his table. Steve eats alone, and if the phone ever rings he doesn’t answer.

He likes watching Steve cook - with his perfect recall and timing and everything else science gave him, he still burns his eggs. And here’s James Buchanan Barnes, watching and waiting for that double-take when he realizes he’s done it again. He thinks about calling, sometimes, to warn him that his stove runs hot. To see if Steve picks up the phone.

It takes Steve three goddamn weeks to find the bug. He doesn’t destroy it: now the camera shows the inside of a cardboard box, and a neatly lettered note: _Jerk. Come visit._

He had expected Steve to find it. Much sooner, even. He had not expected to feel anything about that. It seemed like a harmless thing and now - he could at least see Steve, and now he can’t. Fuck Steve. Fuck this war. He gets drunk - it takes too long and too much, but he can manage it.

Bucky can’t remember writing Steve before. Maybe he never had the chance. HYDRA’s gone to ground, and he spends a lot of time waiting for people to make mistakes. Then he takes them down. Rinse, repeat. He sends Steve a postcard from an airport: _Keep your place swept, your mother would be ashamed._

No hangover: say that for being a super-soldier. He realizes he can watch the lights. Steve left his box in the kitchen, the counter probably: the lights go on and off, and that’s Steve.

The camera shows him a new message: _You’re the only one in here making messes, you know._ He doubts that. Steve is not hard to find.

_They’re still out there._ HYDRA isn’t here anymore: he found them, dropped the building on them. He sends Steve a postcard of the building.

_Come home._

He wants to. But the war isn’t over. HYDRA is still out here, he’s got names. He’s probably taking some shreds of SHIELD down with it, but their hands were dirty too. Steve’s out of it, and he misses being able to see that Steve’s out of it, burning eggs in his kitchen in Washington, DC. He watches the kitchen lights go off and on. They could have been rigged, but maybe Steve wouldn’t think to do that. Come home. Come home. He doesn’t write again.

Not until he works out that SHIELD, now under the command of the previously-dead Phil Coulson, has a non-existent prison for HYDRA operatives. Somewhere. Probably, but not necessarily, somewhere remote and inconspicuous. He could spend years hiking and never find the right facility - or he could save time and ask Steve. He could see Steve, talk to him. It wouldn’t really be dragging Steve into it, just asking for a location. There’s a cold part of him that just wants the intel, whatever it takes to get it. But he needs Steve to be out of it, as bad as he needs to stay in until it’s done.

Another postcard, one with a staircase that’s famous or scenic or something. _Bet your place is still a mess._ He puts it in Steve’s mailbox himself, so he won’t have to wait around too long.

* * *

Steve’s still dressed for his morning run when he bursts out of the stairwell onto the roof. Not even a shield. “You should be armed.”

“I’m not worried.” Steve pulls Bucky into a hug, which might be over the line between reckless and stupid. Bucky hugs back, one-armed. Steve steps back to look him over. “So why now?”

“There’s a holding center for HYDRA personnel. I need to know where. You know the director. Agent Coulson.”

Steve sighs. “Phil Coulson. He was supposed to be dead. Who do you need to talk to in there?”

“They’re HYDRA, I don’t need to talk to them.”

“Bucky, they’re locked up.”

He shrugs. “Then it’ll be easy. No-one knows they’re still alive anyway.”

Steve is silent for a minute. “Coulson isn’t HYDRA?”

“No.” He had been SHIELD, still uses that name. It occurs to him, that might matter to Steve. “Coulson is not the target.”

Steve crosses his arms. Not a good sign, he’s losing this one. “What I’m worried about is you killing prisoners, Bucky.”

“I’m not asking you to go.”

“Good. I’m not going, neither are you. You aren’t thinking straight, Buck. Do you know what you sound like?”

Bucky takes a swing. Right-handed, so it hurts like hell and Steve doesn’t fall. But Steve’s face - he’s not even bruised, not bleeding, it’s just his expression that makes him retreat. Disengage, before he can get any more stupid.

If he runs, the Captain will follow. He has a disorienting sense of done-that-before. He turns his back on Steve and walks, slow, half expecting the shield to come at him out of nowhere. When he gets to the roof he sits, heavy, back against the low wall, tries to clear his head.

He needs an in for that facility. Steve is - not useless, he never was. Steve won’t _be_ used. Disobedient, uncooperative. Ideas that make his stomach twist. Not Steve. But it’s Steve, and it’s him, and at least he walked away after one punch. Whatever he sounds like.  
Steve, reckless as he ever was, walks after him. “You okay, Buck?”

“You could help, but you won’t.”

“That’s right. And you should leave it alone too.”

“Can’t.” I obey my fucking orders, he thinks, sour, not sure where that comes from. “You said you’d help me,” he says instead. “Before.” Steve meets his eyes, so he looks somewhere else.

“Not like that. That’s not what friends are for, Buck.”

“Then what the hell good is that.” He doesn’t mean that, not really. He shouldn’t have come, he didn’t get what he needed, and now Steve isn’t going to let him leave without a fight.

“They’re for saying when you’re being an idiot. You’re not thinking straight on this, Bucky. If this was the war, I’d ask for your gun.”

“And if this were the war, I would need a gun. HYDRA made me a weapon.”

“You’re James Buchanan Barnes.”

“That too.” Bucky smiles quick, humorless. “I remember when the Army put a rifle in my hand. One of the best days of my life. Then I woke up like this... Hydra’s best asset, in the hands of Sergeant Barnes from Brooklyn. I can’t not _use_ that.”

“I know. But - it matters, how you use it. You need a break, Buck. Leave.” He can see Steve changing tactics on him. “It’s a prison, they’re not going anywhere. Do you have a bike?”

Steve waits a long time for an answer. Bucky can see where he’s going. There are a thousand ways it could go wrong, and he thinks about all of them before he says, grudging, “I could get one.” He always had a hell of a time saying no to Steve.

“Requisition, you mean.” Steve sighs, settles in next to him. “War’s over, Buck, that’s stealing now.”

“Steve, how did we lose so bad?” He’s not sure himself who he means by ‘we’. It doesn’t matter really - every side he’s fought on lost.

“Spent all our luck getting through alive. Have you ever been to Alaska?”

“No.” Steve’s making plans, and it’s... it’s a relief. Then he realizes. “Steve, Alaska is cold. You didn’t spend enough time frozen? Somewhere with a beach.” He’s never actually murdered someone on a beach, not the kind you’d vacation at.

Steve grins, wide enough he can see it even without looking up. So that’s it, Steve’s going to drag him across the country on a motorcycle. He doesn’t have to decide what happens, who dies next. He just has to take care of Steve. Which means: “You bring your shield. And a gun.” That way Steve can take him out, if he stops being himself again. Or if trouble finds Steve, the way it seems to.

“Deal. Let’s go pack.”


End file.
